I think the people who want NBC to show 40 year old SNL reruns are VASTLY over-estimating the general public's interest in such things.

A release of the first five seasons on DVD was recently announced. Somebody is interested.

I thought the issue with any of these shows with licensed music was that it was only for syndication so it could run on tv forever but DVD was different so it had to be changed.

The music licensing deal for the syndicated epsiodes ran out. I don't remember the details, but I've read and heard that the cable/syndicated version of the show had the cut episodes starting in the late 90's or early 2000's.

If I remember right, it was a deal where a show on videotape actually had different licensing rules than a show shot on film. Some odd copyright rules applied.

But the 2nd DVD release restored about 90% of the music. They were able to get new deals signed with almost all of the rights holders.

The first five seasons have been on DVD for a while, what they announced was a box set.


There were no such things as DVDs back in the 70s/early 80s, so obviously any music rights deals did not include them.

Have we suddenly changed topics from what NBC should rerun on Saturday nights to what should be made available to collect on DVD?

Every season of SNL is streaming on Peacock, including the non-Lorne years.

Well, this IS DVD Talk...

Back to Howard Hesseman (apologies for diverting it to SNL Talk, and I'm the one who originated that deviation, my bad), I watched the two eps on MeTV yesterday where Johnny became Rip Tide, the disco TV show host. At the end, he chided the kids for listening to generic corporate-bought music instead of the "real" rock and roll and put on an oldies song. Now maybe this is the Mandela Effect, or the Zero Effect, or one of those capital-E Effects, but I thought he put on an actual Little Richard or Fats Domino song when the show aired and on reruns. But yesterday it was an early rock and roll style song but not an actual known recording. Is that one of those many music changes the syndicator had to make for copyright issues?

Oh, and it was nice to see the Too Much Pressure by The Selecter poster in the WKRP booth.

Supposedly this is the original songs list from that EP.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0742620...ef_=tt_trv_snd

It WAS Little Richard in the original airing! I'm not crazy then. Duly noted.

The Little Richard song is included on the DVD version of that episode.

Broadcast syndication and cable syndication are separate. WGN and TBS were broadcast stations, not cable channels. The way it used to go, when a recent show was sold into syndication a local station was guaranteed exclusivity within their market. These syndication packages were for a certain number of years and then the show would disappear from tv for awhile until it was re-syndicated. When Cheers and Cosby were syndicated, local channels complained because the shows were also on WGN and TBS. FCC changed the rules so that shows on WGN and TBS had to be blacked out everywhere but in Chicago and Atlanta to protect local channel's exclusivity. By this time some shows were being syndicated directly to cable and never showed up on broadcast.

It was so expensive to acquire the rights to the music for WKRP that they had to use videotape and could only afford to pay for the initial CBS network run and first broadcast syndication. After the first broadcast syndication on local stations ended the show disappeared for several years. When it reappeared on cable the music had been replaced.

This may sound callous in light of the current issue with artists pulling their works from Spotify (which I agree with), but when it comes to renewing something that you already agreed to (i.e. using a song in a tv show), I think the license holders and artists need to pull their head out of their asses and come up with a better solution.

To be fair, the owners of the tv shows should also renew. That means paying again. They made a deal for a limited use of a song for a set price. If they want to extend their use beyond what was agreed to, they need to make a new deal. If an artist refuses to renew at any price you have a point.

Sometimes the artists ask for ridiculous amounts of money - amounts that would make the release of the DVD's money losers. So they give the owners of the shows two options at that point, remove the song(s), or just don't put it out.

For cable/syndication, it could be a case of the fees they get from the broadcasters still wouldn't be enough to make it profitable to include those songs.

That held up the movie Heavy Metal for years, and the original DVD on WKRP had almost all the music replaced or dropped. There are a lot of other examples.

We don't know what the cost of the music was originally. We know it was high. A new movie or tv show can generate the revenue to cover the cost and still be profitable. 20-40 year old shows/movies cannot. DVD of Heavy Metal is not going to generate the revenue of the original theatrical release. So they can't afford the music. Prime time network ad revenue was enough for WKRP to cover the cost of music. Local stations paid tens of thousands of dollars for each episode when WKRP was syndicated. More than enough to cover the music costs.

When it comes to physical media. When the deal was done for the music rights, that did not included the manufacture and distribution of a physical product that contains recordings of their work.

Is your position that an artist should adjust their asking price relative to the projected revenue? Demand $10,000 for an old WKRP episode, but $100,000 for the same song in a new MCU movie?

Heavy Metal is kind of an extraordinary case. The movie was released in 1981 but didn’t get released to VHS and laser until 1996. Makes me think they didn’t have the contracts squared away when it was initially released.

The movie came out on DVD around ‘99 or ‘00 and has been released on blu-ray, and is coming out on 4k, so they have everything sorted.

It did get played on cable; a friend of mine taped it for me off of Cinemax around 1989 or 1990.

No, but they shouldn't ask for far more than the going rate, which, as I've read, is what a lot of them did. They saw a chance to cash in. Same with Heavy Metal. Later on, in both cases, those artists agreed to more realistic amounts given the amount of revenue the product would generate.

How much revenue will be generated by a particular deal/release has to be factored in.

Billy Jack is one of my guilty pleasure movies. I never realized that was Hesseman or I just totally forgot.
I remember for the next scene they get a couple of locals to play the stoners and he switches to playing the cop.

He also might be the only famous person from Lebanon, Oregon. Old logging town kind of run down now but is changing just like Albany as people flee the cities with insane real estate prices.

Hey, Jack Kirby inker Mike Royer is also from Lebanon!

Yes, I used the Wikipedia page.

Not sure of what song you are talking about, but there was a scene where Johnny played Blue Suede Shoes and said (in a Rip Tide-y way) that it was Elvis Presley, and then corrected himself as Johnny that it was Carl Perkins.